During the months of September, October, and November 2023, Impero delivered 13 product releases for our cloud-based student safety and wellbeing products. These releases have dramatically improved the stability, performance, and overall user experience of Impero Classroom, Impero Integrate, Impero Safeguard, and Impero Wellbeing.
With an average of 4 product releases each month, it can be hard to stay on top of the new features and product updates. Most of those releases were automatically delivered via the web, but new device clients for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows may need to be re-deployed before your organization receives the full benefit of the upgrades.
Releases during the Fall of 2023 have resolved a number of issues and support tickets. If you’ve had any issues with your Impero software, we encourage you to upgrade your device clients to the latest version as soon as possible.
More importantly, by upgrading to the latest release you will take advantage of these new features and improvements.
Have you updated your Impero device clients and browser extensions to the latest version? Are you taking advantage of the latest improvements and upgrades?
This article provides a summary of recent updates and includes links to updated software clients and technical release notes.
Classroom, Integrate, Safeguard, and Wellbeing share the same web-based platform, device clients, and browser extensions – Impero Backdrop. Improvements made to the Backdrop platform and device clients are shared across the entire product suite.
Impero Backdrop (web-based platform and device clients)
- Support for macOS now available. Android, ChromeOS, iOS, macOS, and Windows are all supported providing truly cross platform and multi device classroom management and student monitoring. Read more about installing the macOS client here.
- Administrators have a new tool that allows them to add staff members from school to a staff group at another school in their district or multi0academy trust. This ‘Create Membership At’ feature dramatically simplifies the process of managing staff members who work at multiple schools. Read more about adding staff to multiple schools here.
- School codes are now visible from District / MAT dashboard. This is particularly useful for large districts managing multiple schools. Find all the school codes for your district and export them as a .csv file if necessary. Read more about obtaining school codes here.
- IP Fencing allows administrators to prevent the launch of classroom management sessions or device monitoring when students are outside of a defined IP range (e.g. when they are not at school). Read more about IP fencing here.
- A new search field has been added to make it easier to find students no longer enrolled in your school.
- Now supporting German and Dutch languages for new customers. If you are interested in changing your user interface from English to German or Dutch please contact Impero Support.
- Significant improvements have been made to the process of importing and syncing student and staff records with Azure AD and Google Classroom. While these updates have significant value immediately, they also pave the way for even more dramatic improvements in the future. We are planning a major update to our integration with Google Workspace. Planned release is December 2023 … stay tuned!
Impero Classroom (classroom management software)
- Monitoring notifications can be enabled to let students know when a teacher is monitoring a classroom session. Read more about monitoring notifications here.
- Quickly and easily take screenshots from the single device view to document student activity and capture examples of student work. Read more about taking screenshots here.
- Weblists have been improved. Use wildcard characters to get more granularity when blocking or allowing websites. Additionally, managing lists is now easier because allow & block lists can be applied at the same time.
Impero Integrate (synchronize Impero software with SIS / MIS systems)
- Support for Groupcall Xporter on Demand for Schools. UK based schools have a new option for integrating their MIS data with Impero.
- Improved stability and performance for Clever, Classlink, and Powerschool integrations.
Impero Safeguard (record, manage, and track student safety concerns)
- Concern records have been updated to anonymize data collected on students never-enrolled at the school
- Allegation records meet harms threshold requirements. Allegation records have been updated to improve reporting. This simplifies the process of reporting on allegations that meet the harms threshold (only available for schools in the UK).
Impero Wellbeing (monitor online behavior for indications of harm or distress)
- Machine Learning technology has been integrated with the Wellbeing capture manager. Machine learning algorithms and processes are now available to reduce false positives. Read more about machine learning and wellbeing here.
- Capture notifications have been improved, correcting issues where some capture severity prevented immediate notification.
To read more about all the changes, updates and improvements made during Fall 2023, please read the Backdrop Platform and Device Client Changelog article on our knowledgebase.
Impero’s product and development teams are hard at work on new releases and new versions of our award winning software. If you have questions, concerns, or feature requests, please contact the Impero Account Management team. They are ready and waiting to assist you.